5 Things To Know Today

Apple Inc has asked a federal court to add six more products to its patent infringement lawsuit against Samsung Electronics Co, including the Samsung Galaxy Note II, in the latest in move in an ongoing legal war between the two companies. Reuters reports the case is one of two patent infringement lawsuits pending in the U.S. District Court in San Jose by Apple against Samsung. An earlier lawsuit by Apple that related to different patents resulted in a $1.05 billion jury verdict against Samsung on August 24. Apple is also seeking to add the Samsung Galaxy S III, running the new Android “Jelly Bean” operating system, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 Wifi, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1, the Samsung Rugby Pro, and the Samsung Galaxy S III Mini, to its lawsuit, according to a court filing on Friday.

A federal court in Pittsburgh has ruled that people who piggyback on their neighbors’ Wi-Fi networks forfeit privacy too. The ruling, issued this month, was the first to address the Fourth Amendment rights of such people and the latest to shed light on technologies used by police to locate criminal suspects.The amendment protects against unreasonable searches by the government, requiring that police get search warrants when suspects have reasonable expectations of privacy. The case also raises questions about people who connect to the Internet through public wireless-access points. In a 2011 poll conducted by Wakefield Research and the trade association Wi-Fi Alliance, 32% of respondents said they had tried to get on a wireless network that wasn’t theirs. The Wi-Fi Alliance estimates that more than 200 million households use Wi-Fi networks.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit will review whether the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which regulates Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, will be allowed to follow through with lawsuits filed against 16 banks alleged to have sold Fannie and Freddie $200 billion worth of mortgage-backed securities that didn’t live up to representations made by the banks. WSJ reports the banks argue that FHFA filed the suits too late. That is, they were time-barred by the statute of repose in a variety of federal and state securities laws. FHFA claims the suits were timely brought. The disagreement largely turns on whether statute of limitations provision within the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008, which created FHFA and vested within it the power to bring suits to recover losses stemming from the mortgage crisis, displaces the statutes of repose in the various securities laws.

Federal investigators have uncovered a massive scandal in which dozens of prospective teachers in Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee cheated on their certification tests, NBC News reports. They paid a retired teacher in Memphis to send in people to take the tests for them. For 15 years, teachers in three Southern states paid Clarence Mumford Sr. — himself a longtime educator — to send someone else to take the tests in their place, authorities said. Each time, Mumford received a fee of between $1,500 and $3,000 to send one of his test ringers with fake identification to the Praxis exam. In return, his customers got a passing grade and began their careers as cheaters, according to federal prosecutors in Memphis. Authorities say the scheme affected hundreds — if not thousands — of public school students who ended up being taught by unqualified instructors.

Florida sheriff’s investigators missed a key piece of evidence — a Google search of “fool-proof” suffocation — in the Casey Anthony murder probe, they acknowledged Sunday. WKMG reports the search, made from a computer in Anthony’s home on the day her daughter was last seen alive, could have helped convict her in the death of 2-year-old Caylee, said Orange County Sheriff’s Capt. Angelo Nieves. In July 2011, a jury acquitted Anthony, 24, of murdering Caylee, whose skeletal remains were found six months after she vanished in a wooded area near her home. Nieves said the sheriff’s office’s computer investigator missed a June 16, 2008, search made from a computer Anthony used. The sheriff’s office didn’t consult the FBI or Florida Department of Law Enforcement for help searching the computer in the Anthony case, a mistake investigators have learned from, Nieves said.

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News For You

By Attorney Jorge P. Gutierrez Special to THELAW.TV If you drive enough, you will end up in a motor vehicle accident at some point in your life. Not because you did anything wrong. But more likely because someone else was not paying attention, was talking or texting on the cell phone, or just being negligent…

In The News

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday gave local government officials across the United States more leeway to begin public meetings with a prayer, ruling that sectarian invocations do not automatically violate the U.S. Constitution. From USA Today: The Supreme Court on Monday narrowly upheld the centuries-old tradition of offering prayers to open government meetings, even…

Opinion

By Attorney Melba Pearson Special to THELAW.TV The last two weeks have brought the issues of hate and ignorance to the forefront of the media, as well as the American consciousness. The tragedy in Overland Park, Kansas, the racist rants of a Nevada rancher, and the video of the L.A. Clippers’ owner have created debate,…